Have you ever been confused or frustrated by an inability to renew a CUNY book? Ever wondered why you could renew some CUNY books but not others? At CUNY, initial circulation periods are standardized — 8 weeks for PhD students and faculty, 6 weeks for master’s students — but the number of renewals per item is not. Adding to the confusion, the number is determined by the policy of the library that owns the book, not the policy of the borrower’s home library. So if you have books from several different CUNY libraries, you may not be able to renew them the same number of times!

But there’s good news for doctoral students:

In response to a resolution by CUNY’s Doctoral Faculty Policy Committee, the CUNY Council of Chief Librarians voted in March to better standardize CUNY book renewal policies for doctoral students. Now, every CUNY library offers doctoral students a minimum of two renewals. The exact number of renewals still differs from library to library, but it is at least two across all CUNY libraries.

As always, be aware that renewed books may be recalled if someone else requests them. If a book is recalled, you are notified about its new due date; if you do not return the book by that date, a recall fine of $1 per day is imposed.